The Cultural Afterlives of DADA

Abstract

With his Dadaists friends, Tzara constructed in Dada an art based, like religion, on an interior play of conflicting emotions, soulful contradictions, and  haunting echoes moving in auditory progression toward today’s approximate culture. Beyond reinforced origins that incorporate such diverse influences as  his native village or the fin-de-siècle Dandies, Tzara’s approximate aesthetic conjures the self-separation of artistic sensibility that once consolidated the  community of the early saints. The play Tzara arde şi Dada se piaptănă: Fantoma de la Elsinore (Every Tzara Has His Dada: The Ghost of Elsinore) by Ion Pop,  Ștefana and Ioan Pop-Curșeu is an illustrative example of the cultural afterlives of Dada.